Friday, April 25, 2008

There they are, lining our main drag, both sides of Manatee Avenue decorated with lawn chairs, plastic chairs, metal chairs, wooden chairs – you name it. They are ready for The Parade.

As Vin Mannix notes in his story today, it's been a pre-parade drill since 1978. The 69th annual DeSoto Heritage Festival Grand Parade begins at 6:30 p.m. Saturday – and don’t try using that stretch of Manatee Avenue for anything but parade activities from 5 o’clock on into the evening. They literally shut it down for the parade route from 39th Street to 9th Street West.

And instead of seeing that colorful assortment of chairs, you'll find rows and rows of onlookers vying for beads and candy being tossed from the floats. It’s a great time to put aside differences and enjoy. We hope all goes smoothly, that the sun – and moon – shine through it all, and that folks take home a little more faith in community.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

our small family goes every year and being that my husband is a landscaper and I being a cosmetologiest. We both see lots of clients and family we have in close neighboring counties and they as us every year we have a great time. Going home with plenty of beads and candy for the kids whom are now 7 yrs old and 5 yrs old and they have been talking about going to this parade all week so they are excited if that dont let you know its fun from their point of view then I dont know what fun is. I cant wait to see everyone in town there tonite god bless and have loads of fun riddleyriddles@verizon.net